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Love it or hate it, the Five Nights at Freddy's series is a roaring success, and is surely raking in even more cash after the recently released fourth game. Developer Scott Cawthon has taken to the Steam Community forums to answer the haters and inspire his fans.

Dropsy is a well-intentioned, upbeat clown who happens to be utterly terrifying. He's misunderstood!
Given my fear of grotesque clowns, I've kept my distance, but curiosity got the better of me here. I clicked the trailer. It...

Every now and then, Twitter throws a wonderful iOS recommendation my way and I'm immediately captivated. Today, it's Joel McDonald's Prune, "a game about the beauty and joy of cultivation."
By smartly slicing off a tree's gro...

Here's the part where I tell you that a Fallout game made millions of dollars -- except this time, it's a mobile title.
According to SuperData, a media tracking organization, Fallout Shelter has taken in more than $...

From that trailer, A Nest of Vipers seems like a perfect title for this episode. The question is: which character is in the nest? Asher finds himself in a pit fight (presumably to the death), Gared is north of The Wall in Wi...

Released late last year for PC, This War of Mine provided a thoughtful perspective on war in a video game. Rather than focusing on the glory of battle and how cool it feels to land a headshot on a bad dude, it looks at the l...

I’d forgotten Heroes was even a thing. The first series was great, but then I remember Netflix had problems with the subtitles in the second season so I stopped watching. Apparently that was a good idea, as no one like...

We've got less than a week to download The Rhythm of Figthers - SNK Original Sound Collection before SNK Playmore removes the game from the Apple App Store and Google Play. The company thanked fans for their support but did n...

Don't Starve was announced for the iPad platform yesterday, and soon, you can buy it! It's $4.99, and will only work on "at least" an iPad 3 or iPad mini 2 with iOS 8 and up. Courtesy of a new trailer, you can get a better l...

I've had my eye on Alphabear since seeing the art director tweet out some pictures of the cute bears featured in the game, as shown in the video above. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw it trending on Twitter a...

Nintendo's collaboration with Japanese mobile giant DeNA will result in one game by the end of 2015 and four more titles leading up to April 2017, according to DeNA West CEO Shintaro Asako.
"Nintendo has by far the best gamin...

Everyone’s favourite shaving simulator Don’t Starve is coming to iPad!
The inaccurately titled Don’t Starve: Pocket Edition does two things:
Includes the base game and Reign of Giants, both optimised for to...

Ubisoft has another Rayman in the works for smartphones and tablets. It's pretty! Almost as pretty as Rayman Legends which, despite being phenomenal, not enough folks played.
This time, players will be able to move freely th...

If you've been wanting some new classes in Hearthstone to shake things up, you're probably out of luck for the time being. When asked point blank on Twitter by a fan, producer Ben Brode noted that "we aren't planning on ...

Nintendo is getting into the mobile games space with its partner, DeNA, who will help with the "service side of things." Responding to an investor question about how games will be sold, CEO Satoru Iwata explained that, first ...

I was particularly disappointed with the lack of surprise video game releases during E3 week this year. Normally for at least a few presentations there's multiple "look under your chairs!" announcements where games become ava...

No, not The Elder Scrolls, silly. The other one! Just "Scrolls."
Microsoft-owned Minecraft studio Mojang has confirmed the inevitable -- that work is winding down on its card title now that the "last major content patch," Ech...

Jun 29 //
Laura Kate Dale
Her Story (PC [reviewed], iOS) Developer: Sam BarlowPublisher: Sam BarlowMSRP: $5.99Released: June 24, 2015
From the first set of clips tagged murder, I had several options of which narrative thread to pull at first. Did I want to look for clips related to the victim's name first? Maybe I should try to track down the name of the person accused of the crime? Perhaps I wanted to go in a completely different direction and try to find references to the murder weapon on the database. Right from the start, several different avenues opened up and the number of narrative options to explore only expanded as I went deeper into the case.
You can't organize clips you find chronologically or watch them in order without re-searching for them, meaning that a lot of the work of piecing the narrative together is down to you as the player. There's an in game application that will show you which pieces of the case you've watched and which you have not, but it's up to you to keep track of where each statement falls in the timeline of police interviews and how their placement fits together.
Much of the mechanical challenge in the game comes from piecing the story together in a way that draws conclusions you're personally satisfied with. At around two hours in, I had seen enough that the game offered to let me see the credits roll, but I personally wanted to know much more of what was happening and ended up playing for around six hours on and off before I was truly satisfied with my understanding of the events. Others I know felt they knew everything they needed within half an hour. In terms of pacing, Her Story lasts however long you want it to in regards to narrative. Any time you feel the game is ready to end, you can draw your conclusions and walk away.
Ultimately, Her Story is a really inventive way of exploring a narrative with an impressive number of twists and turns. Every time I thought I understood what was happening, a clip would become unearthed that turned my understanding of the case on its head. The story was personal, uplifting, dark, twisted, insightful, and unnerving all at once.
I know we get a lot of talk of narrative-focused adventures as "not games," but this is a narrative that undoubtedly benefits from its open-ended interactive nature. If this isn't a perfect example of how video game interactivity can enhance a narrative, I don't know what is. Being able to unearth these twists out of order, rushing to understand what you've found, and bouncing tonally back and forth across a series of interviews truly is the perfect way to experience this skillfully crafted narrative.
It's not a typical structure for a game, but the mechanics really do work in the context of the narrative. If you like the idea of an open-ended '90s murder mystery with no guarantee you'll find a solid answer to its mysteries, then I can't recommend this highly enough. Her Story is a spectacular video game, and one of the most gripping personal narratives I've experienced in some time.
[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the developer.]

Let's solve a mid-'90s murderHer Story is certainly not what you would call a traditional video game. Set entirely on a police computer database in the English town of Portsmouth, it breaks a lot of new ground in terms of blending its narrative and gamep...

Tales from the Borderlands: Catch a Ride is out today, and it continues the excellence the series has been known for thus far. As I normally do while playing through Telltale titles, I had my finger firmly planted on the F12 ...

Jun 23 //
Darren Nakamura
Tales from the Borderlands: Catch a Ride (iOS, Mac, PC [reviewed], PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox One)Developer: Telltale GamesPublisher: Telltale GamesReleased: June 23, 2015 (Mac, PC)MSRP: $4.99, $24.99 (Season Pass)Rig: AMD Phenom II X2 555 @ 3.2 GHz, with 4GB of RAM, ATI Radeon HD 5700, Windows 7 64-bit
[Editor's note: there will be no major spoilers present for the episode reviewed here, but events in previous episodes may be discussed.]
When we last saw Fiona and Rhys, the duo had just constructed the Gortys Project while Vaughn and Sasha were being held hostage. Atlas Mugged ended with a significant Telltale choice for Rhys to make: trust Fiona in her ability to improvise the situation or trust the shadow of Handsome Jack residing in his own cybernetic head. Though the decision was given a lot of weight, the episode concluded before we got to see much of an effect.
As it turns out, the opening sequence to Catch a Ride plays out quite differently depending on which option was selected earlier. It's enough of a difference that along with the review code, Telltale sent a message imploring me to play through the episode twice in order to see just how far-reaching the consequences are.
The differences are there, and they persist until about the third act, but at that point the two branches sort of homogenize together. Without giving away too much, trusting Handsome Jack unlocks the help of three characters who aren't necessarily available to those who instead trusted Fiona. However, by the end, all three are out of the picture one way or another, despite that they could have been particularly useful.
[embed]294552:59205:0[/embed]
It shouldn't come as a surprise to anybody who has played a Telltale game in the past few years that the overall narrative threads all begin and end in the same place, but Catch a Ride does feel like an improvement in that regard, if only slightly. Though the player cannot really affect how the story ends, certain scenes play out differently enough to warrant another look.
One silly change I appreciated was that Rhys's Echo Eye ability is corrupted if he lets Jack into his systems. Instead of the dry humor found in the default descriptions, Jack inserts his own brand of over-the-top musings. I do wish this idea were taken further; there is a section in which Rhys has to hack a computer and having a digitized version of Handsome Jack ought to have helped in that situation.
Fiona also goes through some questionable design territory with her abilities. Where her sleeve gun was previously limited, providing the possibility for interesting choices, its power is unlocked in the episode. It nullifies the opportunity cost that piqued my interest in Atlas Mugged; when I spent that incendiary bullet singing Finch's hair off in the second episode, I thought that would be the last time.
Now it almost feels like Telltale is trying to set Fiona up to be a proper Vault Hunter in Borderlands 3. While on the one hand it will definitely be cool to see Telltale's original characters in Gearbox's next effort in the main series, it would detract from her uniqueness as a smooth-talking con artist were she to become another gunslinging badass.
Speaking of characters, we do get a few new cameos from the main series here, although their inclusion feels a bit like fan service. After playing through twice, I'm still not quite sure why they were there, but it could very well be something that is planned to be explained in the future. As it stands, they show up, say some funny lines, do some outrageously violent things, and advance the story in a way, but their motivation isn't clear.
That is a relatively minor complaint, especially considering the best thing Catch a Ride has going for it is one of the new characters. Gortys turns out to be a friendly robot and she easily has some of the best lines in the episode. With the personality of an earnest young child, she feels so out of place in the dark wastelands of Pandora that I couldn't help but be charmed. Everybody on the planet is gruff, insane, murderous, jaded, or at least sarcastic that having one character who is none of those is just perfect.
Some of Gortys's lines tap lightly on the fourth wall; those are worth a lasting grin. There is one scene of hers in particular that had me laughing heartily, both times I played through. Even knowing it was coming, the setup and delivery were so on point that it killed. Ashley Johnson's voice work was perfect for the role. I don't know how this story ends, but I hope Gortys survives the ordeal in one way or another, because Borderlands needs to keep that character around.
It may seem like a lot of my thoughts on Catch a Ride are negative, but they are minor quibbles in the grand scheme. Though I'm a little disappointed the two protagonists aren't using their unique skills as much as they did in the first episode, the story they team up to tell is still completely engrossing.
The writing is as sharp as ever, with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. The end of the episode has just the right amount of cliffhanger to it. Tales from the Borderlands: Catch a Ride feels like a complete chapter in the story, but now I have a rough idea for what to expect in the next two episodes. With that narrative skeleton in mind, I am looking forward to watching the rest of the series play out now more than ever.
[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]
Tales from the Borderlands: Atlas Mugged (iOS, Mac, PC [reviewed], PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox One)Developer: Telltale GamesPublisher: Telltale GamesReleased: March 17, 2015 (Mac, PC)MSRP: $4.99, $24.99 (Season Pass)Rig: AMD Phenom II X2 555 @ 3.2 GHz, with 4GB of RAM, ATI Radeon HD 5700, Windows 7 64-bit

Worth the fare[Disclosure: Anthony Burch, who consulted on the story for Tales from the Borderlands, was previously employed at Destructoid. As always, no relationships, personal or professional, were factored into the review.]
Ever s...

The third episode for Tales from the Borderlands is out today on PC and PlayStation consoles (with the rest out this week) so Telltale sent along this shiny new trailer for it. In it, we see some cameos from Vault Hunters Br...

Jun 18 //
Kyle MacGregor[embed]294301:59143:0[/embed]
At first glance, Lara Croft GO bears a strikingly close resemblance to Square Enix Montréal's first effort. It echoes the quiet, clean aesthetic of Hitman GO, while featuring similar turn-based puzzle design, but pushes the concepts further. Fresh elements like verticality quite literally add new dimensions to the experience, and go a long way to making this feel like a legitimate Tomb Raider.
The characters are no longer static figurines, as the designers felt it wouldn't be natural for Lara, a character known for her athleticism, to be portrayed in such a rigid fashion. So while our heroine is still navigating an on-rails obstacle course, she's fully animated, looking very much at home as she climbs and scrambles around ancient, subterranean ruins.
Perspective is also used to great effect, with the isometric camera allowing the developers to add little flourishes like a silhouetted beetle crawling along a tree branch in the foreground, or see a bridge appear in the distance when Lara toggles a switch.
Square Enix Montréal is also keen on avoiding unnecessary hand-holding. The title's 40 levels (which are quite a bit larger than those found in Hitman GO) are based around trial and error. With each stage now divided into segments with checkpoints, new mechanics can be introduced and then used in rather sophisticated ways in short order without a loss of progress.
One example of this is terrain that will fall away when walked over or climbed across twice. Shortly after being introduced to this by falling to my death, I was using it to evade an enemy. Knowing a certain surface would crumble away, I used it to lay a trap for the giant lizard nipping at my heels.
Not all of the obstacles I saw were quite that compelling, though. While it was a rush to see an Indiana Jones-style boulder trap, the turn-based nature of the game makes this sort of scene less compelling than if were to play out in real time. Still, what I've witnessed thus far has me eager to see what else awaits in the full game.
Lara Croft GO is coming to iOS and Android devices sometime later this year.

Small in scale, but no less impressiveSquare Enix Montréal possesses a genuine talent for artfully distilling series down to their essence.
In 2014, the developer released Hitman GO, a turn-based deconstruction of IO Interactive's stealth franchise, w...

Ragnaros vs Nefarian
Hearthstone just rolled out its first ever Tavern Brawl event, which features premade decks squaring off against each other. The event will change every week, and as of today, it's Ragnaros vs Nefarian. Each big ba...

Holy heck, people love Fallout. Bethesda released Fallout Shelter for iOS right after announcing it on Sunday -- Chris says it's pretty good -- and it's already knocked Candy Crush Saga off its consistent third place perch on...

There were audible shouts from the audience when Square Enix mentioned Kingdom Hearts during its E3 press conference. Then the game appeared and everything was deathly silent.
The publisher announced Kingdom Hearts Unchained,...

This evening at Bethesda's E3 media briefing, the company announced The Elder Scrolls Legends, a free-to-play strategy card game based on the worlds of Skyrim and The Elder Scrolls Online.
Expect more details in the coming months, as the title's planned for a 2015 launch on PC and iPad.

Hearthstone is still a great way to spend an afternoon in my household. I really dig the mobile port, and the newest Blackrock expansion is superb. Even if I haven't played in weeks, it's incredibly easy to jump bac...

Check and checkIf you're making a Star Wars game with pilotable ships, I'm going to want to zip around Hoth in a snowspeeder and tie knots around some AT-ATs. I'll also want to shoot down a bunch of TIE Fighters on my path to destroy the De...

Blizzard has announced it is releasing new heroes for Hearthstone at $9.99 a piece. Don't worry though, the meta will stay exactly the same because the heroes are little more than cosmetic changes on existing classes. Your te...

Yeah, I know. Mobile. But even if you have zero interest in the game, at least watch this trailer. Star Wars: Uprising fills story gaps between Return of the Jedi and December's The Force Awakens. Rumors of the Emperor's dea...